*OFFICIAL* Alienware Area-51M R1 Owner's Lounge

Ohhh... You had me searching the entire Web to see where that 2TB was being sold haha... all good. Wow do you have in RAID?! That's monstrous... in fact the Samsung 970 EVO Plus is the best (value to performance) drive for RAID ..IMO ... I also have the 1TB 970 PRO for my OS drive and it's amazing as well... but if I were to RAID it'd be with the EVO's for sure... just because.

Yup... I use 2x 330W. Does it help? No. Does it make me feel better for no reason other than that it's just a 660W combined PSU? Yes.

 

3 days ago it was 40-45C(outside) and gaming temps were under 82C a massive 10C difference due to increase in ambient temps. I even formulated an idea, 1C rise in ambient temps does increase cpu/gpu/ any component by 4-5C provided the humidity is >70%. My Avg. humidity >80%-90%.
I don't get tired at all walking outside with 40-48C because humid level is less than 50% while inside the house the humid level is >70% or >80%.

 

Wow yea that's extreme temps for sure. How do you bare it? Kudos for that... As for the correlation in temps, that sounds about right... even in normal conditions 1C rise in temps will equate to roughly about that from what I've seen... a lot of times it just reaches the saturation point faster then stabilizes, which I've noticed to be a smaller difference in ratio the rise in the ambient temp. However, after a certain point (temps) it spikes as expected.

 

Gracias but not using it for power but for OCD looks , that’s all

 

Guys, out of curiousity - what battery life do you get with full underclock/undervolt in normal usage like web browsing?

 

Hahahah, awesome I have a second 330w I bought from HID, let me throw away this 180 baby , no raid , single drives . Game on one with some Media , OS on one , and 4tb for all the junkss in the world

 

Ultra Male: I don't think any laptop even DTR's support >2667MHz on 4xSODIMMs aside from Clevo (I'm unsure about this detail for Clevos). According to Intel's spec sheet 2xSODIMMs even on skylake (NUC is taken as ref. point) can do 2667MHz ultra Low CAS HyperX to 3200MHz HYperX or Sammy B Die or Micron/Crucial Ballistix or Corsair vengeance.
When you have 4xSODIMMs Skylake use 2133MHz, KBL uses 2400MHz while CFL and beyond can use 2667MHz as standard freq.
Your A51M can take single stick 32GB ddr4 2667MHz or 3200MHz if you populate only 2 out of 4. Possible RAM sticks will be Samsung B Die(expensive) or Apacer or crucial ballistix or HyperX or Corsair Vengeance or Ripjaws X or even SK Hynix will do because everyone internal switched to Samsung B Die for less operating costs and mix n match frequency. Micron, SK Hynix and Sammy are readying ddr5 prototypes for the enterprise. You can believe it or you can take a look at over 1000+ spec sheets for correct answer.

 

I'm used to that and I cannot live in cold region <10C anymore! My body has adjusted to it. Actually in metro city it avg. around 50C and in desert it'll be a lot more. I can bear only upto 48C and if its more I find a shade under tree to bring my body thermals down.
My only hope is my mini-freezer keeps my eggs cool so that I can buy more candies for my kids.

 

Dont suppose you have a guide with pad tickness at each point of redoing the machine and where they are placed? Also i saw you mentioned this is your second machine? What happened with the first one to need a second?

 

Have fun! -- Let me know if you're going to rid the smaller psu... I may pick it up from you.

Wow... props to you brother... I can't imagine being in 118F (48C) for too long... For most of us in the States, those who live in southern States or whom have visited Vegas for example know what 100F+ can be like... it's like opening up an oven lol.

Stay cool! Pun intended haha... Cheers mate.

 

I don't have anything published yet, but I'll be releasing more of a review / guide in the near future. As for the systems I just have two. Nothing is wrong. Both run perfect. I own multiple systems and travel a lot and often keep systems at the different offices. The under side pad that I used is 1mm. As for the main pads, those are a bit misleading because the elongation of the pads all differ, along with them being oversized in many of the areas. I always pressure paper test fit the heat sink to ensure that the cpu and gpu die(s) are making proper contact. All systems vary a little bit due to the tolerance levels.

 

Don't plan on gaining much if any doing an undervolt. Its very marginal not even noticeable.

 

Area-51m, memory upgrade 128GB?


Clevo specs... Supports XMP 2666/3000 MHz XMP is processor dependent and works with four DIMMs in dual channel or two DIMMs in single channel. I think @Prema or @Johnksss tested out +3600 on 128GB ram package.

 

Thank you. I love high performance laptops, hate working on them. Like working on desktop much better

 

So dell reached out to me quickly after
Speaking to frank and said they will send me a new unit. I should have it in a week or less. HID will still give me their warranty on the new unit when I receive it. Alienware did state that they did make revisions to the motherboard AND GPU to correct the issues. Hope this goes well....


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I was taking into account non-Premafied BIOS. I didn't see Prema's results but I have seen John's results in his signature.

 

What I showed is from specs sheet directly from Clevo.

Spoiler

When will they post it on the web like Twitter and Facebook? Even their own support tech page Alienware/support. Or they try to hide it?

 

Awesome! I am sure all this is getting ironed out. As much as I hate social media it is helping us. Also helping keep them in the lime light to get this resolved and help users.

 

Atleast Clevo know XMP exists!

 

So here I am with a little side by side comparison of the lemon with my working 2080 GPU. I'll post pictures alternatively so you can do cross comparison of part numbers etc.

Lemon-1:


Working-1:


Lemon-2:


Working-2:



Lemon-3:


Working-3:



I replaced the lemon with my own GPU and performance is back. The temps are under control with the installation of the new heat sink with max not exceeding 81 degrees celcius.

 

And, I got lucky with my 2nd 9900K that I bought yesterday and delidded. I'm happily under-volting this bad boy upto negative 160 mV! The older 9900k wouldn't like to go beyond negative 115 mV. My absolute max temps with this are 79 degrees celcius during cinebench. Idle is a happy 45 degrees!

 

I ordered my system on March 11th, got delayed because of parts shortages. It arrives tomorrow and I really hope it's the revised version! Seems like it's a 50/50 chance.

 

Revision number on the card?

 

I'm torn, this thing has almost zero portability like the msi gt75 but the i9 9900k and 2080 more than makes up for that. But at $3k usd, I can build a 2080/ryzen 2700x for about half the price and get better gpu performance and around the same cpu performance, and obviously better cooling which is critical. But I love the laptop form factor probably more so than the desktop. Just hard for me to justify this purchase I guess. I want it, but hard to make that leap especially knowing how bleeding edge tech like this depreciates so fast. Maybe I'll just wait for an insane deal, gpu prices are still a bit ridiculous right now. Be interesting to see what the prices will be in 6 months when these are 1 year old. Might even be safer to buy after the 1 year mark after all the revisions to this tech.

Problem is as awesome as the 1070 and 7700hq are, I'm feeling the limitations, and seeing the benefits of 8 core / 12 threads for productivity. Bleh, I might just have to build a desktop sigh and I really don't want to.

 

You can always build a fast and cheaper desktop. Comparing cost and performance is really like apples or oranges.

 

I just checked and it's the same as my working one. But doesn't make sense because the parts are different as you can see. May be they didn't change the revision number stamp on the PCB and just updated parts instead.

 

Dude, i lugged my gt75 titan around daily for 2 years that included a brisk walk of around 5 km. What are you talking about? The msi backpack was incredibly comfortable. May be you need to put on some muscle.

 

Oh well, you can easily buy a 2080Ti desktop for 3k that will leave a laptop in dust in terms of performance.
I had a tiny ITX 8700K w. 1080Ti and it ran like a champ and was even OC'ed. Just needed a CPU delid and it did 4.8GHz across all cores no problem in a Node 202 combined with Scythe Big Shuriken Rev2B cooler.

 

Well that's great... nice job cause' even with two repairs and insisting behavior i wasn't able to obtain nothing else but "nope deal with it" from both Dell & HID (but kind and respectful).

You ordered in U.S ? If that's the case it's nice to know that both companies give absolute 0 care of their E.U customers...

 

Yes I ordered in the US, and that’s terrible.


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Isnt'it ? (i'm sure you get my point it's a good thing that you obtained what you obtained there)

 

@iunlock Sure thing, it’s a beast

The backpack is also superb , now to get rubbers to tie the adaptors together

 

Agreed.

I saw these two tiny teenage girls lugging around huge DTR laptops in my old university, even bigger than the A51m. They were animation students which explains why.

If a 5ft 45kg girl can carry it, then so can you.

 

Anyone know if Windows Hello still doesn't work with this unit?

I seriously doubt that it's a hardware limitation but rather a software limitation.

 

I know but I like laptops more than desktops, but I also like spending less too lol. So I have no choice but to compare. I remember just before the mining boom laptops were so cheap, you could get a 1070 laptop with a i7 7700 for $900 usd retail regularly on a good sale. Now it's different with the rtx line out, retail prices on 10 series and 20 series are absolutely through the roof.

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I definitely need to put on muscle but it's more of a question of wanting to lug around a gt75....not that it wouldn't be sitting on the desk 24/7 most of the time any way...but when I would take it out I would want it to be this monstrosity of a laptop that I need a hiking backpack for haha. Although I would love to see more guys with a GT83 gtx1080 sli at coffee shops clicking away on their full cherry keyboard. I was lugging around 17 inch G751 regularly though back in the day, not exactly a MacBook pro but definitely heavier than the gl702 I have now.

True. I think I will wait for Zen 2 to come out...that's 5 months away and see how that stacks up price/performance wise. Maybe the 2080 Ti will see a price reduction by then as well. It's not like I'm suffering with a 7700hq and gtx1070 in my gl702 any way.

 

Is anybody else getting the vibe there is a coverup on the go here?

I have been following this thread since page 1. It seems extremely strange that Dell will revision mobo + GPU so early, yet state there is no issues with hardware (Frank), and quite a few systems dying off prematurely out of the blue.

And while all this comes out the woodwork, all the earlier units have not been called back. I wouldn't want a potential ticking time bomb that cost me some serious $$$ just sitting there on a "whim" it doesn't blow.
Why has there not been a global recall...

 

I wish there were better fans that had that clip thing. It was really good for portability. I like taking out the fans and nesting the laptop at the back when moving out.

 

@cope123abc
I very much doubt there will ever be an official statement on this. They want to prevent panic and getting 80-90% of their machines sent back...

 

I would have trusted Dell if they had atleast recalled the "first" batch if that's what they say are the problematic units instead of waiting patiently for the users to complain about the burnouts.

The fact that they haven't recalled the "first" batch signals that either they don't care or that they haven't figured out the issue yet to actually fix it!

In both the cases, it doesn't sound good for them.

 

They must have figured it out though for revision to the mobos and gpu's - time will tell i suppose if those revised components start burning out.
I'm not pointing the finger, just seems shady..

 

Even if they figured it out, it doesn't look good to leave your first customers with $5k probable lemons .. A proactive approach would've gone a long way to improve customer trust. I get your point but understand that it's not an entry level device from dell, it's their flagship device and a premium pro active support would only have improved sales for 51m.

You have to do a bit more than the usual service routine to improve the flagship experience for the flagship price

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...m-owners-lounge.826831/page-729#post-10894680

 

I wonder is this issue related more to the 2080 card. I have read around the net of Nvidia 20 series cards dying off.

 

Well when my new “revision 2” unit arrives next week I’ll update everyone and put it through the tests. Like I said I’m willing to give a second chance because this laptop is amazing and there is nothing else like it


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It was the Ti version and mainly the Founders one that was dying, however some EVGA, ASUS and Gigabyte cards died too. The issue was related to the memory chips from Micron, later Nv switched to Samsungs.
They died by showing artifacts and/or losing video output, not by going up in smoke like some guys's 51M's did.

 

Good man

 

Well, not CPU voltage, but maybe GPU voltage...

Maybe that was just a mere coincidence, but I wouldn't flash that 200w VBIOS for the moment until everything is sorted out...

By the way @HaloGod2012 I'm really sorry for you, I have been following your positive feedback about this laptop and hopping no other area 51m would die.
I hope your replacement works flawlessly and lasts for many years

 

I’m already having a bad feeling about going through dell. They were supposed to call me over an hour ago to get some info for the exchange. No call....this can end up being a nightmare. Also, they tell me I’ll receive it in a week or less. Why do I not believe that one bit?


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Yeah dell is now starting to mess with me. They called me and their 1 week turned into 3 weeks minimum. They are calling me back again in 15 minutes but this is the exact reason I wanted to avoid dell. If they don’t have a better option after this next call then I’m just returning to HID for a refund and staying away from the 51M

UPDATE: returning the unit for a refund. When this high of a level of support and management at dell can screw around with me this much, it’s not worth it. They went from 1 week or less to 3 weeks minimum and completely changed their story once it came time to start the replacement


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I'm really sorry to hear that man. Really sucks. But does that mean you're going to wait for a revision 2 or something? The wait is bad but like you said, there isn't really a viable alternative to this machine :/